The Body
by Loki's Symphony
Summary: Hogwarts, 1998. Voldemort is dead. The world is safe. Harry has goodbyes to say to the last of those who fell for him, but the opportunity for a first - and last - conversation presents itself. A two-part one-shot.
1. Chapter 1

**It's been a long hiatus from for me, and an even longer hiatus from the world of Harry Potter fanfic. But this idea came to me in a flash of inspiration the other day, and I simply had to get it down. Thanks go to ClareMansfield for a few very appreciated suggestions. I do not own Harry Potter or any related characters, etc, etc.**

**[Keep in mind; this story is designed to read as if Deathly Hallows never finished. It begins at the very moment The Flaw in the Plan ends.]**

**Constant Vigilance!**

* * *

The Body

by Philip Kent

"You said it, mate," Ron laughed, wrapping his arm around Hermione's shoulder and pulling her a little closer to him as the three friends descended the steps.

"He didn't do too badly, did he, Albus?" Phineas Nigellus called to the silver-haired portrait behind the desk, its occupant dabbing his eyes with the edge of his sleeve now the three were safely out of view, before adding with good-natured relish, "Well…for a Gryffindor."

Harry, Ron and Hermione emerged back into the corridor where a small parade of victory was barrelling past, the Grey Lady floating above the children of assorted years with a rare, possibly unique smile gracing her cold features. Raucous cries of _To our valiant dead! _rent the air, greeted by boisterous cheers as the sounds of movement and action echoed round the ancient halls.

"How long do you reckon this is going to last?" Hermione asked, her brow knotted slightly as she watched a second year barrel-roll on a broomstick in the stairwell.

"God knows," Harry replied, surprised to find himself laughing. The deed was done; Voldemort was dead, the Elder Wand would lie undisturbed forevermore and the right to wield it would die with him. The world Harry had so long been fate-bound to protect had been saved. It was like a stone he never knew had rested upon his shoulders all his life had been removed, letting him stand up straight and breathe free for the first time in his memory. For all the times he'd deliberately stopped himself from celebrating with his friends when he knew there was still more to do, still greater perils to face, he could now readjust the balance; the time to celebrate had finally come.

"Well, you're looking better, anyway," Ron said, the banter flowing free once more. "You realise that you've now survived _three _Killing Curses, right?"

Harry laughed shortly but the smile soon dropped from his face. As soon as the words had left Ron's lips he was greeted by those glimpses of his friends' dead bodies, laid out on the floor of the Great Hall before him; each brought down by the curses that he had shrugged off. The time to celebrate may have come, but there was something he needed to do first. Doors he had to close.

"I think I'm gonna go," he swallowed, "go pay my respects to…Remus, and Tonks, and…and Fred," he said respectfully, noticing Ron's measured gaze as his chest swelled at the mention of his brother's name. "I didn't get a chance to…before."

Ron nodded, understanding. "Take your time," he replied softly, gripping into Hermione's shoulder as she hugged into him tightly. "We'll be in the common room, I expect." The pair of them knew there was never any choice of joining him; this was his right alone.

"Thanks," he muttered, turning on his heels and descending the winding staircase down to the first floor. Harry had seen too many dead bodies in his short life, but something about this sickened him more than anything else he could previously remember. Maybe because until now, all the dead bodies he'd seen had been those who had fallen by his side; adrenaline and fear had shielded him from the disgust and despair which surely was only natural. Now he was making the decision to view the lifeless things that had once been his friends; to spend his time with the bodies of the people he had once loved, but which he knew in his heart were no longer them. But he owed it to them; this one last goodbye.

The Great Hall was still packed with a maddening throng of witches and wizards, centaurs and house-elves, all celebrating joyously and breaking out the Butterbeer. Familiar faces came and went as Harry stood in the doorway, barely even recognised anymore as the elation became bigger than just one man. Neville and Luna were kissing wildly as they sat on the Gryffindor table - Luna quite visibly wearing that particular pair of trousers - as the entire surviving Weasley clan, minus Ron, sat beside them in a close circle, serenely calm as they remembered Fred quietly, the odd ripple of laughter bubbling from them only to be broken by a short sob from Molly. For once in his life he was glad to not be noticed by a blanched, deathly-looking Ginny.

Hagrid sat at the Hufflepuff table, telling a group of slack-jawed first-years the story of Harry and Hermione's daring rescue of Buckbeak in their third year. Shielding his face from the revellers Harry darted towards him and tapped him on the shoulder.

"…'An who should come along but Cornelius Fudge, the old Minister fer Magic! I tell yez, I was shakin' like a Bowtruckle on a…Harry!" he turned and whispered, as if talking any louder would have suddenly revealed his presence to the world. "How're ye doin', lad?"

"I'm fine, Hagrid," he said hurriedly, painfully aware of the intake of breath that went around the youngsters around him, imagining he could almost feel their lungs bursting. "Just, where did they put the…" He couldn't bring to say the word. "Put…Remus and Tonks and…all the others?"

"Oh," Hagrid replied softly, his smile dropping. "They, er…put 'em in the old Recluse Room," he told Harry, his eyes motioning towards the end of the hall. "Used to be the teachers' private dining room, till they brought the table out here in me second year. Lot o' brouhaha over the matter, actually-"

"Thanks," Harry muttered and set off at once, leaving Hagrid alone and his anecdote unfinished.

"Bu-wait!" Hagrid said as Harry sped away. "Ye don't wanna go in there; they've just put…ah, he's gone. So where was I? Ah, right! So old Fudge says to me…"

Harry made his way to the small ante-chamber behind the long table at the head of the hall, once occupied by Dumbledore, Snape, Mad-Eye, Lupin and so many others who had been lost. Aberforth slept peacefully in his brother's old throne-like seat, his arms slumped over the sides and muddy boots fouling the dais. With his silver beard and half-moon spectacles somehow still in place after the battle, he could easily have been the old Headmaster himself, Hogwart's own Once and Future King.

"Hey, Harry," came a rich, familiar tone as he approached the door to the ante-chamber. His former Quidditch captain Oliver Wood stood guard over the room. "You realise I'm not supposed to let anyone in."

Harry's mouth hung agape for a number of seconds, any amount of vitriolic outbursts screaming all at once in his head - _But it's me! Harry Potter! They died for me! They were my friends! _- but at last he closed his mouth, his lips forming a tight line as he nodded and made to walk away. He was too tired and had fought too hard to lose his temper.

Oliver smiled charmingly as Harry seemed to draw back. "But then, you're not anyone, are you?" He stepped backwards and stood with his hands behind his back, clearing the door for Harry to enter.

Harry stood confounded for a second, his tiredness beginning to punish him. "Oh…t-thank you," he managed to get out after a while, walking to the door and slipping inside quietly.

The ante-chamber was surprisingly large and cold. Stretching a good few dozen yards into the distance, it was narrow and high-ceilinged, more like a cathedral than a dining-room. It seemed quite fitting that so many should lie in rest here. A few sparse torches lit the windowless room, and under the architraves of the many columns that lined the way they lay; tens of bodies, some large, some small, some wearing the familiar uniform with a full variety of green, red, blue and yellow. With a few exceptions it was almost as if they could have been sleeping; line by line, side by side they slept peacefully, eyes and mouths closed.

Harry's legs finally allowed him to start walking, scanning the double-row of bodies that lay on each side of him. Half-remembered faces seemed to jump out at him; the third-year who had tried out for the Gryffindor Quidditch team last year, the pretty Slytherin girl who had alone refused to wear a "Potter Stinks" badge in Defense Against the Dark Arts. And there they lay, halfway down the room, in a line; Fred Weasley, Remus and Tonks.

Swallowing hard Harry stepped towards them and knelt at their feet, shivering as the air seemed to spontaneously freeze around him. Fred's face, though cold and sunken, still showed the faintest traces of the smile with which he had greeted his death; Harry told himself that somewhere, Fred was looking at his own body and splitting his sides at the inappropriateness of it all. Shifting his eyes to Remus and Tonks, Harry first noticed that their closest arms had been hooked together, their stiff, cold fingers brushing each other's gently. _Luna's work_, he guessed unerringly.

For all the macabre atmosphere the room held a certain peace to it, a calm restfulness that Harry found a lot less disturbing than he'd feared. Sitting cross-legged before them he began to speak. "I'm sorry you had to meet your ends here, like this," he mumbled, his lips feeling thick and numb. "I'm sorry you had to die for me."

_We died for the Order, Harry, _he could hear Remus' voice responding in his head, smiling sadly and closing his eyes tightly. _Just be a good Godfather to Ted, _he heard Tonks reply. _Let him know our lives meant something._

_Don't forget me, you speccy little git,_ Fred piped up. Harry chuckled softly. "A very wise man once told me that the dead never leave us, not really. Looks like you're already proving him right." His old friends were silent once more, still and calm. "Thank you for everything," Harry told them quietly as his voice broke and a tear dropped to the dusty ground, reaching forward to grip Fred's hand and Remus and Tonks' joined hands in his, his flesh crawling a little at their unexpected coldness. "Goodbye."

Harry stood a little shakily, gripping the pillar to help him as he exhaled loudly, wiping a couple of errant tears from his cheeks. But it was done; he braved the sight of his friends' bodies and said his goodbyes. He gave one last glance towards the end of the row of corpses and made his way-

Everything stopped. His body refused to move, his eyes refused to turn away. There at the end of the hall, far away from the main body of dead, were two just-visible feet, unlike any other in the room; or indeed, any other in the world. Bone-white and skeletal, with long, repulsive yellow nails; Harry's mind seemed slow to realise exactly who it was, even though every fibre of his body had known instantly. It made sense, after all; they couldn't have just left him in the Great Hall to get trodden on and torn apart.

Harry's eyes remained fixed on the feet. It was like being back in King's Cross with Dumbledore; it could have been hours or seconds. Finally able to tear his eyes from them he turned his head towards the door, behind which he knew Oliver to be patiently standing guard, allowing him all the time he liked. He made his decision.

As if tearing himself from the spot Harry trod forward heavily, eating up the yards between himself and the body at the end of the hall. The pair of feet loomed larger and more grotesque as he drew closer, and out of habit Harry found himself reaching into his pocket to retrieve his wand. Standing stock-still, he closed his eyes and had to convince himself quite strongly: _He's dead. Finally dead. No way back now. _Sighing loudly he pocketed his wand and made up the last few feet slowly, allowing the body to gradually reveal itself.

Alone of all the others in the room, he didn't look a bit at peace. His body was limp and flat but his face; that inhuman, serpentine face still bore all the anger and hatred he had for seventy years or more turned himself into a vessel for, flecked by that final note of shock and surprise as the Killing Curse rebounded yet again, to kill him outright. Those red eyes stared endlessly, endlessly into the dark, a crimson veneer concealing nothing.

"Hello," Harry said hollowly, successfully concealing all he really felt. Silent again, he crossed to Voldemort's side and, his eyes instinctively flicking towards his hand to make sure he really was dead, he sat cross-legged beside his head. "We need to talk."


	2. Chapter 2

The Body (Pt. II)

by Philip Kent

The celebrations in the Great Hall were just a memory here. Here, at the far end of the Recluse Room where Harry sat next to the dead body of his nemesis, nothing penetrated the thick oak door and stone columns. The room was filled with the silence that only the dead can make; a nothingness, still and unnatural.

For the first time Harry was able to study Voldemort's features minutely; despite his face haunting his nightmares since childhood and coming face-to-face with him on multiple occasions, he had never before had cause to really look at him. His red eyes glistened dully in the torchlight. His mouth lay agape, revealing a row of blackened, odd-shaped teeth and a dark, oily tongue. His skin had the look of snakeskin stretched over marble; translucent and pearly. What must he have done, Harry thought to himself, to have annihilated his soul and deformed his looks so completely?

"Dumbledore always told me," Harry began, his throat dry as he forced his lips to move, "that the reason you could never be truly all-powerful was because there was too much you just didn't understand. Like love," he said, leaning back against the cold stone wall. "When you possessed me back in the Ministry of Magic, I could feel how much it hurt you. And I could feel you, too, you felt so…damaged," he breathed, shaking his head as he remembered the sensation.

"And then I saw you," he went on, "in King's Cross, with Dumbledore. It took me a while to realise what you were. I just felt like I should…help you," he said bitterly, his words loaded with spite. "Even after I realised, I still wanted to help you," he spat through grit teeth, his fist clenching with frustration at his own sensitivity. "I don't know if you…heard us, or felt us, or if you remembered anything from that, but I saw you. I saw what kind of a soul you'd left for yourself." Harry breathed steadily. "I told you back then, back in the Ministry, that I pitied you," he told the corpse, turning his head to look it in its unblinking eye. "I still do," He added a little sadly. "More, I think. I pity you for not having the wisdom to turn back when there was still a chance…or to take my offer," he mumbled, burying his forehead in his hand, remembering the offer he had made Voldemort just seconds before his death.

_Try…try for some remorse…be a man…_ He'd taunted Voldemort as they stalked each other in the Great Hall. **_There is one way... _**He heard Hermione tell him from a lifetime away. **_There is one way someone with a shattered soul might mend themselves. Remorse...you've got to really feel sorry for what you've done..._**

_I've seen what you'll be otherwise…this is your only hope… _But he just hadn't listened. Tom Riddle, Voldemort, the Dark Lord; ever the wisest and greatest of wizards. What could Potter have known about what lay beyond; what could he have told the great Voldemort, he who had conquered death?

Harry pulled his knees up under his chin as tears began to drip down his dusty cheeks. His anger swelled and threatened to burst inside him; why was he crying? Was it self-pity? Was it pity for Voldemort? Emotion ran unchecked through his body as he pushed his glasses up his face, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Why did you have to do this?" Harry asked, almost petulantly, through tears. "Why? You were clever - you were more than that, you were brilliant! You could have been every bit as famous and loved as Dumbledore, you could have done so _much!_" Harry barked, his voice bouncing off the stone walls. This was an entirely new sensation; as he looked down at Voldemort Harry could, for the first time, begin to make out beneath the ghostly visage the thunder-faced child he had once watched a younger Albus Dumbledore rescue from a Muggle orphanage.

"You were never alone, you know," he whispered, his voice regaining his strength as he wiped away a tear and went on. "You always thought you were so alone, so…isolated, but you weren't. Dumbledore was always there; he _never _gave up on you. Wasn't that enough for you? Or were you just incapable of feeling love from the beginning?" He shot the last words like an accusation, his eyes tearing away from Voldemort's as he realised he wasn't going to get a rebuttal. He suddenly recalled what Dumbledore had said to him in his Pensieve last year; how Riddle's mother had seduced his father, Tom Riddle Sr., with Amortentia, only for him to abandon his pregnant wife when the potion had worn off. As the product of such a one-sided, twisted love, how could Voldemort ever hope to understand what love truly meant?

Harry still bristled and burned with anger for Voldemort, but another, less welcome sensation crept its way up his throat as he began to look past the serpentine face. A real sense of despair, of hopeless loss for the man Riddle could have been. As Harry's green eyes glanced sideways to look at Voldemort again he could almost see the handsome nose he'd seen on him as a younger man, dark brown eyes fade in to replace the inhuman red slits and his bone-white flesh inflating to become pink, wrinkled skin, every line telling the story of a year.

This wasn't Voldemort. This was Tom Marvolo Riddle, Jr.; last living descendent of Salazar Slytherin. Prefect, Head Boy, Head of Slytherin House and Professor of Defence Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Former protégée and now dear friend to Headmaster Albus Dumbledore, and trusted teacher and confidant to James Potter, Remus Lupin, Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew, and their friends Lily Evans and Severus Snape. And in time their children would know him too, and he would teach Harry Potter how to cast a Patronus, as much a part of the school as the stones in the walls or the ghosts that roamed the corridors endlessly.

Harry roared as he slammed a fist down on Voldemort's chest, sending his limbs jerking eerily. "Why did you - become - this?" He yelled in the grip of a fury he had never felt before, his fists crashing into the dead wizard's ribs, hearing them snap sickly beneath his pounding before gripping his robes and pulling him up to face him. "WHY DID YOU TAKE THEM AWAY FROM ME!" He bellowed into Voldemort's ear, his voice becoming a hoarse, strained whisper as flecks of spittle stained the dark robe in his hands. Burying his face into the fabric Harry roared again, muffled, as he shook Voldemort's body violently. "W-why," was all he could eke out as his breath gave out, the black fabric becoming soaked through as he wept into it.

The two stayed locked together, as they had in life, while Harry's body shook and he hurled every foul name and curse he could muster, Wizarding and Muggle, at his parents' murderer, dead in his arms. After what seemed like an age Harry exhaled, feeling the last of eighteen years' worth of rage finally leave his body. His arms went slack and he tumbled backwards, sitting back down gracelessly as Voldemort's body slipped back to the floor with a heavy thump. Once more sitting on his own, Harry removed his glasses and wiped his eyes, as red and bleary as his old enemy's.

"You killed my mum and dad. I can't forgive you," he blurted out, suddenly uncomfortable at the absurdity of talking to a corpse. "And no matter what you'd say, I don't think Dumbledore would 'want' me to, either." He shifted his position to kneel more stably at Voldemort's head, before continuing, "But, for what it's worth…I'm sorry." He stretched out his hand and closed the dark wizard's eyelids and mouth respectfully, absent-mindedly smoothing out the stained creases he'd formed with his grip. Slowly he got to his feet and backed away from the body, never tearing his eyes from it.

"You're right," came a familiar soft Scotch brogue, cracked and whispering. "He would never have asked that of you."

Harry didn't even bother to turn around. It seemed Professor McGonagall had always had his back, in some form or another. "What's going to happen to him, Professor?" He mumbled, nursing a hollowness greater than any Dementor could hope to inflict.

"Ministry officials will be here any moment," McGonagall replied, her voice slowly regaining the same sense of delicate authority Harry had come to expect from her. "They say they want his body on display," she told him quietly, stepping forward to place a hand on his shoulder. "To prove he's really dead."

"No," Harry replied instantly, his mind utterly made up on the matter. "Absolutely not." He registered a small twitch of surprise out of the corner of his eye and turned. "That's what _he'd _do."

McGonagall tightened her lips impatiently, trying to convince Harry to come around. "He came back once before, Harry…to those of us who lived through his first reign, let me tell you, that was…" She swallowed slowly before finishing, "unpleasant. And besides, this is an official decree from the very highest level-"

"And who's the Acting Minister for Magic?" Harry asked, waiting for McGonagall to relent. She did; she well knew that Kingsley would very likely grant Harry that one wish in his moment of triumph.

"What would you have them do with him, Harry?" She asked him, leveling her hawk-like gaze at him. "Bury him and raise a temple for whoever will follow him - and they will - to worship at?"

"Bury him in secret," he replied, "somewhere on the grounds. No marker, no headstone. Hogwarts is the only ever place he felt at home," he explained softly, knowing all too well how his former nemesis felt. "And you don't have to worry about him coming back as a ghost…there wasn't enough left of him for that."

McGonagall coughed tersely, clearly none too pleased by the thought of having Voldemort's remains mouldering on Hogwarts property. "Well, Potter, I expect you shall have to bring that up with Mr. Shacklebolt when he arrives," she told him smartly, the air of the teacher having once more settled upon her. Harry knew that she was not-too-subtly telling him it was time to leave.

"I will," he replied, smiling thinly. Silently the two turned and set off back down the room, and Harry came to a stop one last time before Fred, Remus and Tonks. They were just the same as he left them minutes ago. With one final glance to the end of the room where those white feet protruded in the distance, Harry turned and stepped back into the Great Hall, closing the door behind him.

**The End**


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